Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works eBook

been here twenty years,’ he said. ‘My
wife died here.’ And all of a sudden he
went as dumb as a fish. Never let his eyes off
us, though, while we finished up the last of it; made
me feel funny, seein’ him glowering like that
all the time. He’ll savage something over
this, you mark my words!” Again the agent paused,
and remained as though transfixed, holding that face
of his, whose yellow had run into the whites of the
eyes, as still as wood. “He’s got
some feeling for the place, I suppose,” he said
suddenly; “or maybe they’ve put it into
him about his rights; there’s plenty of ’em
like that. Well, anyhow, nobody likes his private
affairs turned inside out for every one to gape at.
I wouldn’t myself.” And with that
deeply felt remark the agent put out his leathery-yellow
thumb and finger and nipped a second bluebottle. .
. .

While the agent was thus recounting to his wife the
day’s doings, the evicted Tryst sat on the end
of his bed in a ground-floor room of Tod’s cottage.
He had taken off his heavy boots, and his feet, in
their thick, soiled socks, were thrust into a pair
of Tod’s carpet slippers. He sat without
moving, precisely as if some one had struck him a blow
in the centre of the forehead, and over and over again
he turned the heavy thought: ‘They’ve
turned me out o’ there—­I done nothing,
and they turned me out o’ there! Blast
them—­they turned me out o’ there!’
. . .

In the orchard Tod sat with a grave and puzzled face,
surrounded by the three little Trysts. And at
the wicket gate Kirsteen, awaiting the arrival of
Derek and Sheila—­summoned home by telegram—­stood
in the evening glow, her blue-clad figure still as
that of any worshipper at the muezzin-call.

CHAPTER XIX

“A fire, causing the destruction of several
ricks and an empty cowshed, occurred in the early
morning of Thursday on the home farm of Sir Gerald
Malloring’s estate in Worcestershire. Grave
suspicions of arson are entertained, but up to the
present no arrest has been made. The authorities
are in doubt whether the occurrence has any relation
with recent similar outbreaks in the eastern counties.”

So Stanley read at breakfast, in his favorite paper;
and the little leader thereon:

“The outbreak of fire on Sir Gerald Malloring’s
Worcestershire property may or may not have any significance
as a symptom of agrarian unrest. We shall watch
the upshot with some anxiety. Certain it is that
unless the authorities are prepared to deal sharply
with arson, or other cases of deliberate damage to
the property of landlords, we may bid good-by to any
hope of ameliorating the lot of the laborer”

—­and so on.

If Stanley had risen and paced the room there would
have been a good deal to be said for him; for, though
he did not know as much as Felix of the nature and
sentiments of Tod’s children, he knew enough
to make any but an Englishman uneasy. The fact
that he went on eating ham, and said to Clara, “Half
a cup!” was proof positive of that mysterious
quality called phlegm which had long enabled his country
to enjoy the peace of a weedy duck-pond.